Holiday Tree: February
Continuing my stubbornness of not wanting to take my pretty Christmas tree down, I decorated it for the month of February. As you may have guessed it, it is indeed a Valentine’s themed tree. I was so excited when I went to Michaels and saw all of the Valentine decorations. I even found heart shaped ornaments! Clearly I’m not the only lunatic who is still decorating their tree well into the new year. I wanted to make the tree look romantic not just plastic hearts everywhere. What could be more romantic than roses? I mean it’s a symbol of love and probably the most sold item that day! I guess I could have incorporated boxes of chocolates some how, but knowing myself they wouldn’t have lasted. Regardless, I set out to make this tree look elegant and not cheesy. I was really proud of how it came out and was excited to share it with the world!
I got everything from Michaels so if you are wanting to purchase anything you see on the tree there you go. The tree it's self was from Target. Here’s a link to my original post about it. Before going into the store I had no idea what I was going to put on top of the tree. I was like…. a big ass heart?…. maybe a cupid? I really had no clue what I was going to find, if anything at all. How many people really show out for Valentine’s Day? So I walked around Michaels just trying to get inspired, and let me tell you, as someone who doesn’t consider herself very creative or crafty, there is something about that place that makes you want to create something. I look at all of these supplies and spools of fabric and glitter and frames and think to myself… what can I make? Then I remember I have no patience for things that don’t come natural to me and that my many past attempts at being creative have ended up in total frustration and haphazard junk. Regardless, something about this store just gets those juices flowing. When I saw the giant rose, which turned out to be my tree topper, I fell in love. No pun intended. I knew it had to be the topper. There were two different sizes and I went with the larger size, cause bigger is better right? Once I had picked out the ginormous rose I had the idea to grab some plastic roses so that I could weave them throughout the tree. This was that delicate romantic touch that I was looking for. To my surprise, they had ornaments for Valentine’s day so that was an easy grab. I also found these heart shaped doilies, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get them on the tree but I loved how elegant they looked with the lacey pattern and the inscribed “love.” I also found these loose glitter hearts that came in different sizes. They didn’t have any way to attempt to hang them on the tree but I knew that it would look great sprawled across the bottom. It just gave it that extra oomph to make the tree go from oooh to aaahhh. The red blanket I already had in my home.
So the weekend leading up to the start of February, I went to work removing the January themed ornaments and began decorating the tree with the new theme. Now here’s where I got into a pickle. I recently adopted a kitten… more on that in another post. Well I never really had a kitten before and although I have seen many Facebook videos of cat’s fascination with Christmas trees, the thought had never crossed my mind. I mean the tree had been up already with my MLK/BLM decorations when I brought the kitten home. The tree didn’t seem to phase him. It wasn’t until I began to take the decorations down that I think he finally noticed it. It started off with him just kicking around and chasing an ornament I had placed on the floor. Well this playfulness turned into a major problem once I started putting the new ornaments up. The kitten was hell bent on ensuring that he knock each and every one of them down. I had to constantly fling him off the tree. Something that would have taken me about an hour to do suddenly became an epic battle of Man VS Cat. About two or so hours later, I finally had the tree up. I gave up and let the cat play/destroy the old ornaments I had taken down to occupy him while I finished the current task. The tree was done and it looked amazing. I was really proud of myself. Knowing that it was completely possible that the tree was never going to look as good as it did in that moment I started to take pictures. Thank Buddha that I did because the series of events that would unfold in the next few days would not have made it possible to share my work with you all. The damn CAT! He was obsessed with the tree. You would have thought it was a monolith of catnip or something! He could not leave it alone. It started with just kind of tussling with the glitter hearts that were at the bottom, then knocking down a few of the low hanging ornaments. But this wasn’t enough for him, no, he wanted it ALL! I started finding him inside the tree! Eventually I came home to this…..
The tree was destroyed. The cat has won the war. I was both pissed and relieved that it was over. I was exhausted from constantly shooing the cat out of the tree, coming home to ornaments strewn across the floor. I was a little disappointed that I had to make the decision to just cut my losses and finally put the tree away. I had so many great ideas for the rest of the months, and this tree had not even lasted a week. I knew I didn’t have the patience to keep dealing with the cat’s obsession. I knew I would just grow more frustrated with the situation and decorating the tree would not be enjoyable anymore. So sadly, I bid adieu to my endeavor. It was nice while it lasted.